Investigating the Relationship between the Quality of Middle Schools and House Values within the Birdville and Keller ISD in Watauga, Texas.

386 residential sales were investigaed in Watauga, Texas between March 1, 2008 and June 5, 2009. Data was analyzed and missing data points were created by associating with nearby addresses. School rating information was not part of the original MLS dataset. These rating categories were obtained via the Texas Education Agency website. The scope of the investigation was narrowed to include only middle schools as this had the most information per rating category. A preliminary model was constructed with property characteristics having a sufficient amount of data (greater than 20). The adjusted R-squared was 84.6% for the preliminary model. Only statistically significant variables were promoted to the final model. This reduced the number of independent variables from 23 to 9.

The final model had an adjusted R-squared value of 84.8% and showed that parents are willing to pay a 2.89% premium for middle schools rated Exemplary. The level of significance was p<0.076 which is in the gray area. Thus, although quality does matter, it is a characteristic of quality which parents consider. More research is necessary to dissect the term general term "quality" into its constituent parts. Such characteristics may be the quality of the facility, the level of parent-teacher interaction, the technologies available to students, the number of qualified teachers, etc.